Russia Derangement Syndrome

Let me see if I can get this straight:

1. The West imposes unprecedented sanctions of Russia, freezing its dollar assets in the West, locking it out of SWIFT, prohibiting and effectively cancelling business deals....

2. Russia says, "OK, but then if you want to buy our gas, you'll have to pay for it in rubles.

3. Germany shrieks "BLACKMAIL!!!!"

So Germany gets to pay for gas in dollars which Russia can't access because of the sanctions?

The West can deal with the present crisis in whatever way it wants, but it shouldn't loose its marbles in the process.

Biden goes Bonkers

How the American propensity for grandiloquence, bombast and stark moralizing certainties runs the risk of making matters worse while still yet making a fool of the speaker. [read]

The Price of Our Values.

President Biden has announced that the price of bread can be expected to rise. Chipster explains how the call to defend the Ukraine is actually a war against both the Ukrainian and the American people; in fact, against ordinary people everywhere. [ read ]

Snuffing out the Flame of Truth

True to its mission to report on "All the News that's Fit to Print" -- and only the news that's fit to know -- the New York Slime today weighed in vehemently against unfitness, protecting us from the raging flames of Sino-Russki viral untruth [ read ]

A Rosary with Beads of Blood

Woodchip comments on how infantile iconography is used to keep readers of the mainstream mudia in the dark as to the underlying issues of the Ukraine conflict. [read]

Rejoice! We have no Bananas but Victory is at Hand!

The Price at the Pump is about to soar and the ragged hardships of those making under 100K a year is about to get harder.

All we (the West) have managed to do is translate total war over to the economic sphere. Total war in whatever form is totally wrong because it inevitably impacts on civilians.

The whole premise of the modern law of war was to confine it to the military and to military targets. Area bombing was wrong because, by definition, it targeted civilians in order to terrorize them into submission. (Those were the exact words of the theory.) Indiscriminate non-targeted sanctions are no different.

Americans don't seem to realize that, in an interdependent world, economic sanctions automatically boomerang. Hit the other guy; smash yourself. (For the philosophically inclined it's pure Schopenhauer.) That is exactly what is happening now. We hit Russia's oil production and smash ourselves in the wallet.

And, in purest Orwellian fashion, we are told by our politicians that this is good for us; that getting even broker still is something we should take pride in... for freedom's sake.

If the political elites actually had to suffer what ordinary people are told to endure, there would be less war and less sanctions.

What can we in this paragon of liberal democracy do about this? Actually nothing. Our rulers are invulnerable and indifferent to any pathetic squeaks of protest

Financial Carpet Bombing - The West's New Nifty Strategic Tool

The "Liberal Democracies" of the West have announced drastic financial sanctions on Russia, which aim to destroy her economy and, if possible, to undermine its government. Woodchip thinks this is a colossal mistake and not the way to resolve a crisis which is mostly of the West's making, even granting that the invasion the Ukraine was illegal. [ read ]